Keep It Quiet
by PlaidButterfly
Summary: Sequel to Deceit. After settling in to a hermit's life on Tatooine, Obi-Wan finds the reformed smuggler he used to know as the sith Asajj Ventress in his life again. One-shot.


As soon as he suspected what was on the edge of his senses, he had blown the dust out of the old speeder's motor and entered the city. He was wise, and knew that there was no such thing as kismet, not with the Force, and especially not on Tatooine. But he recognized the name _Asteria Seljac_, and knew who it really was. It had been years since he needed one last lift back to Tatooine, and the nervous and faltering half-human smuggler woman had been a convincing guise to everyone but him. But even despite that, he was still very glad to see Ventress, especially with madness turned into earnestness, her eyes a clearer blue than before.

"Family? I kriffing doubt it. But come on, I guess you can see her." The medic yawned even as he picked up the datapad and gestured widely; the back door to the gritty clinic opened with a dry grinding noise. And she was there on the table, without the makeup, without the wig, herself in mind and body in a way he hadn't ever seen before, despite her unconscious state.

"Just another worthless smuggler. Jabba seized her ship and the load she was carrying before I could petition to have the city sell them so I could get the assets to cover her bill. Shoddy kriffing work, I'm not a neurosurgeon but I know _that_ much…"

"Do you know what happened?"

"Sure, yeah. Cured it, too, as best I could. Stroke brought on by that shoddy work, dunno if she had a tumor or a bad implant or what, but butterfingers left mincemeat all through there –" He gestured vaguely at her skull, where he could now appreciate that a jagged scar cut through two of the fading tattoos. "Good enough to speak enough to let me know she didn't have a credit to her name other than that damn ship. I have to recoup money somehow, you know? If you had just said you wanted to see her, I would have let you. Usually it's fifty credits for fifteen minutes. Don't complain about the price, she takes three times the regular amount of sedatives. Anyway, she's got tits just like any other woman and I keep telling complainers that if the white skin thing throws you off, just pretend she's a Twi'lek, you won't know the difference once you get going…"

Obi-Wan was not a man to ever be overcome with furious anger and homicidal urges. Instead, there were occasional glimpses of calm, rational truth, when that calm and rational truth said that the person standing before him was scum beneath contempt and he shouldn't feel the least bit guilty. With that same serene clarity, he waited until the medic's back was turned, and made sure the strike with the hilt of his lightsaber hit right at the point where it made his eyes roll back in his head. Once Obi-Wan had moved the medic's unconscious body off to the side just enough, he carefully untangled her from the wires and the sedative feed, and carried her out with him.

There was only one bed in the small house, and he let her have it.

And he sat by it, waiting. He let the wind outside speak, but otherwise he kept quiet. He was not used to using his voice, these days, and when he finally said something, the words seemed to have a life of their own, standing in the empty and quiet space.

"I'm not sure I am entirely charitable," he confessed, "bringing you here. It has been lonelier than I anticipated."

It took three days for the drugs to wear off, or at least he presumed that it took three days. He was not awake when the night before she slipped out on trembling feet to stare at the dunes, and he was not aware how for a very long time she considered walking over them to spare him the trouble of having to deal with her. Eventually she decided she was enough of a coward to be a burden, and slipped back into the bed.

He found her standing beside him while fixing dinner, and as he drew in a surprised breath to speak to her, and she shook her head to stop him. He waited politely while she struggled with the words, getting her mouth to remember what they were in Basic and to curl into the right shapes. "Please don't."

They stared at each other for a few long moments, and he saw how the madness in her eyes had been replaced with exhaustion and grief, and understood. He nodded very slowly in agreement, and went back to stirring the stew of mushrooms collected in the elaborate moisture-farming setup he had managed to acquire. And she took the bowl of batter sitting beside him and waited until the griddle was hot enough, and made the frybread to eat with the stew, and gave herself the piece that she badly burnt.

And that was how the days ran, in quiet but not silence.

There were many other things that talked: the wind outside, the baying of krayt dragons in the distance, the soft burble of the moisture farming screen, the pop of stew and the hiss of frybread batter hitting the griddle. But he had looked into her eyes and understood that she was tired of words, because words – Dooku's beguiling lies, Sidious' foreboding decrees – were what got her into her problems. The words had always stood between them, what passed for witty banter during a lightsaber duel. Now she was too exhausted for them, and he understood. It was a different time, now, and they were both tired actors who had shuffled off their stage. The lines had been memorized and recited and now it was time to rest.

The first night together, she had stubbornly tried to make herself a cot on the floor, only to wake up in the morning after he had moved her to the bed in the middle of the night. By the end of the week she seemed to accept that he would not place her in a subservient role, no matter how much she thought she needed to be in one. For another month, she uneasily slept in the bed. For another few weeks, he watched as she kept making a suspiciously Kenobi-shaped space in the small bed. She settled the question by grabbing his hand and pulling him up, and then, that was how they slept.

She worked, and she was proud of working. Another body to feed meant extra work but she was determined to do it all, he thought, some days. The only thing she did not try to do for him was the sewing, which made him smile, because it was almost a joke – of course the Sith did not show their charges how to mend a pair of robes.

And each day came one at a time, because they all looked the same, and it was hard to count years. The only real event came with Luke's birthday, when he would take the old speeder out to look at a distance and see that the child was still thriving. How she waited for him, standing patiently in the doorway, was a new and welcome addition to an old routine.

At some point they slept closer together, because there was only really one good blanket, and the desert nights were cold. And then closer became her lips pressed up against the back of his neck, and his hand somehow finding hers and wondering if her hands had always been so slim and delicate. And then it became a moment of doubt – a walk alone in the desert, where he looked to his old master's spirit to quench his doubts; Qui-Gon smiled generously, and told him that the one regret he held from life was not spending more time with Tahl, the woman he had called his Love. So that night when she pressed against his neck softly, he slowly turned, shifting over her to stare into her eyes and see what they told him. And she had pressed the softest of kisses onto his lips in return.

He always remembered that night clearly, even though the only light was from the stars and the three moons, and how the whiteness of her skin made it seem almost as if she were made of the same light and glow streaming in the far window. It was perhaps too romantic a sentiment but he believed it and so it was true.

And the days ran in quiet but not in silence, because the language of each sighing breath they gave was language enough for them.

She did not talk about how his hair began to thin and grey. And he did not talk about how her hands trembled, and how she had to rest more frequently than before, and how the sunlight sometimes made her dizzy with pain. Talking of it would have meant worrying for the future, and that would have been words getting in the way. They existed, abiding in each others' company, safe in the understanding which had worked its way between them and blossomed. The language of fingertips and knowing glances was more pure and they knew it perfectly.

Six years, three months and a day after the quiet began, it was broken.

The morning was like any other, though he had the rarity of waking up first, only by chance. And he snaked an arm around her waist and pressed a kiss to her neck, and waited, and she didn't stir. As he sat up, she didn't move. The Force was already telling him what he needed to know, that something had happened in the middle of the night and she had finally slipped away. But his hand still reached out to gently nudge her cheek, then shake her shoulder. "Ventress?" It seemed too formal, he supposed, and so he softened his voice and asked: "Asajj?"

She didn't answer, but the wind outside did, picking up to a keening howl. And Obi-Wan knew how very alone he was.


End file.
